Hair care compositions which claim to impart both shampoo and conditioner properties to the hair at the same time are well known in the art. Such compositions typically contain one or more surfactants for shampooing or cleaning purposes, one or more "conditioning" agents for the purpose of making hair easier to comb when wet, and more controllable when dry, and a suspending agent to suspend a conditioning agent in the composition. Typically, these conditioning agents are either water-insoluble oils or cationic resinous materials or surfactants or a combination of both. In compositions containing both an oily conditioning agent and a cationic resinous conditioning agent, the suspending agent also functioned to prevent the cationic conditioning agent and the commonly used anionic shampooing agent from inactivating one another.
Prior art teaches stabilizing a non-volatile silicone in an anionic surfactant base using xanthan gum, long chain esters of ethylene glycol, long chain fatty acids (C.sub.18 and higher) containing a C.sub.22 fatty acid, carboxyvinyl polymers, carboxyvinyl polymers in combination with long chain fatty alcohols, and particle size.
However, the use of some suspending agents in combination with the above ingredients necessitated the used of in-line mixing of at least three separate suspensions or dispersions that had to be premixed in three separate tanks. In-line mixing added cost and complexity to the manufacture of high volume consumer hair care products. It would be desirable to have a more efficient production process.
Additionally, it would be desirable to have an easy to manufacture shampoo and conditioning composition providing both enhanced shampooing and conditioning without compromising shelf-stability. Further, desirably, the composition utilizes both oily conditioning agents and cationic conditioning agents to provide enhanced conditioning. Further, desirably, such oily conditioning agent will be suspendible and stabilizable with an anionic acrylate copolymer alone or in combination with a fatty acid, both ingredients commercially available at uniform activity levels. Further, desirably, the acrylate copolymer and the fatty acid will be compatible with and not inactivate the cationic conditioning agent or agents. Further desirably, such conditioning agents may be incorporated into an anionic shampoo system.
Heretofore, compositions utilizing cationic conditioning agents and other known suspending agents have been difficult to prepare due to the incompatibility of the two substances and the processing requirements of the particular suspending agent. Accordingly, it would be desirable to have shampoo and conditioning compositions wherein the processing time is substantially reduced and wherein the incompatibility problem is also circumvented.
It would be desirous to provide a suspension system for the suspension of a non-volatile silicone and a cationic resin to provide superior conditioning properties and which reduces the processing time of the composition. The present invention addresses the problem of suspending a non-volatile silicone in an anionic surfactant system in an economical manner.